Jacare dos Patins

Passinho is a new wave dance battle culture coming out of Rio de Janeiro. Like funk (and samba long before that) passinho comes out of Rio’s favelas, but it’s very much a post-funk paradigm:

The dancer replaces the DJ or MC at center stage. It’s battle format, but high camaraderie. It’s dominated by male dancers, but the vibe is decidedly pro-homo, flowing across gender borders with the same ease Joao Xavi argues passinho dancers move between battlegrounds in a pacifying patchwork of favelas.

I filmed this video during an interlude at the Batalha do Passinho on St. George’s Day in the City of God, and I can’t believe I’m saying this, but props to Coca-Cola for sponsoring this madness. The movie by the same name is now over a decade old, and it’s also time to retire some of our City of God-era images of favela as a bad, bad word.

Jacare dos Patins, also known as Carlos Jaccinto, is a fixture in Rio’s street art scene. He got his first pair of skates in 1994 when he was still in the Brazilian Marines.